Beware from Dengue Fever

 

Dengue (pronounced DENgee) fever is a painful, debilitating mosquito-borne disease caused by any one of four closely related dengue viruses. These viruses are related to the viruses that cause West Nile infection and yellow fever.

Each year, an estimated 100 million cases of dengue fever occur worldwide. Most of these are in tropical areas of the world, with the greatest risk occurring in:

• The Indian subcontinent
• Southeast Asia
• Southern China
• Taiwan
• The Pacific Islands
• The Caribbean (except Cuba and the Cayman Islands)
• Mexico
• Africa
• Central and South America (except Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina)

 

Most cases in the United States occur in people who contracted the infection while traveling abroad. But the risk is increasing for people living along the Texas-Mexico border and in other parts of the southern United States. In 2009, an outbreak of dengue fever was identified in Key West, Fla.

Dengue fever is transmitted by the bite of an Aedes mosquito infected with a dengue virus. The mosquito becomes infected when it bites a person with dengue virus in their blood. It can’t be spread directly from one person to another person.

Symptoms of Dengue Fever

Symptoms, which usually begin four to six days after infection and last for up to 10 days, may include

• Sudden, high fever
• Severe headaches
• Pain behind the eyes
• Severe joint and muscle pain
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Skin rash, which appears three to four days after the onset of fever
• Mild bleeding (such a nose bleed, bleeding gums, or easy bruising)

Sometimes symptoms are mild and can be mistaken for those of the flu or another viral infection. Younger children and people who have never had the infection before tend to have milder cases than older children and adults. However, serious problems can develop. These include dengue hemorrhagic fever, a rare complication characterized by high fever, damage to lymph and blood vessels, bleeding from the nose and gums, enlargement of the liver, and failure of the circulatory system. The symptoms may progress to massive bleeding, shock, and death. This is called dengue shock syndrome (DSS).

People with weakened immune systems as well as those with a second or subsequent dengue infection are believed to be at greater risk for developing dengue hemorrhagic fever.

Diagnosing Dengue Fever

Doctors can diagnose dengue infection with a blood test to check for the virus or antibodies to it. If you become sick after traveling to a tropical area, let your doctor know. This will allow your doctor to evaluate the possibility that your symptoms were caused by a dengue infection.

Treatment for Dengue Fever

 

There is no specific medicine to treat dengue infection. If you think you may have dengue fever, you should use pain relievers with acetaminophen and avoid medicines with aspirin, which could worsen bleeding. You should also rest, drink plenty of fluids, and see your doctor. If you start to feel worse in the first 24 hours after your fever goes down, you should get to a hospital immediately to be checked for complications.

Read More

It needs New Vision in Agricultural Sector

In order to feed a population of 9 billion in 2050, the world will need a New Vision for Agriculture - delivering food security, environmental sustainability and economic opportunity through agriculture. This will require producing more food with fewer resources while reinvigorating rural economies. It can only be achieved through collaboration, investment and innovation among all stakeholders. This report outlines the concrete actions that can be taken to achieve such a vision, and the tools we can use to measure progress.

 A number of countries are now undertaking ambitious efforts to achieve the New Vision through a transformation of their agriculture sectors, engaging in public-private collaboration and market-based approaches. The report outlines six elements that are essential stepping stones toward success in a large-scale transformation effort. These are illustrated by examples from national initiatives underway in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Read More

The Food Security Challenge

The lack of food. Increasing agricultural productivity and access to food are the primary development goals of the 21st century. Demand for food has reached new heights, and predictions of future demand are; The food-insecure population in sub-Saharan Africa is also expected to increase by up to 32 percent by 2020, whereas food insecurity is projected to decline in Latin America and Asia.Overall, the world will need 70–100 percent more food by 2050, when the population increases to 9 billion.

discouraging. Although growth in global demand for cereals will slow in the coming 40 years, demand in sub-Saharan Africa will balloon by as much as 2.6 percent per year.

The lack of nutrients. The lack of food is not the only problem. Almost one billion people were undernourished in 2010, and the lack of nutritious food has serious, long-term consequences for physical and mental health. More than one in seven of the world’s people do not receive enough protein and carbohydrates in their daily diets. These people constitute 16 percent of the developing country population.

The rising prices. Even with projected reductions in food insecurity, price spikes could keep staple food out of the reach of poor people. The 2008 price spikes led to starvation in many countries, hitting the net food importers—typically the poorest countries—the hardest. Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda experienced maize prices that were twice as high as in the previous year. In Kenya and Mozambique, prices rose by 50–85 percent, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Sharp and unexpected price spikes can provoke riots and political instability, aggravating an already precarious food situation. FAO recently predicted that the total costs of food imports would reach a near-record level in 2010, roughly US$ 1 trillion.

The changing climate. Climate change has made the challenges of food security and rising prices even more stark. Continued release of greenhouse gases increases the likelihood of unpredictable weather and temperatures. The severe 2010 droughts and fires in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan raised wheat prices substantially, leading to grain embargos in multiple countries. Russia’s wheat exports fell by 13 million metric tons in one year.^e Pakistan’s floods are another warning of the serious climate changes facing developing countries. The loss of soil nutrients that can accompany climatic extremes makes agricultural land less productive and adds to food insecurity. This prospect is ominous, considering the consistent drop in cereal yields over the last decade.

Read More

A role Model in Agriculture from Masasi District, Tanzania

Athmani Mochiwa, District Agriculture Extension Officer, has been working for 20 years in Masasi District, Tanzania, working to help farmers adopt new practices and technologies.  He sees his role as being the link between the farmers and the research institutes. “I’ve been involved in each and every step of the Pathways process—from the beginning to now. As an agriculture expert, my role was to advise CARE on some of the seeds to introduce and which technologies and practices to improve. I also worked to create some awareness among the villages about what the project is about.” He currently supervises a staff of 22 paraprofessionals (extension officers) and 5 ward extension officers to whom he provides active support.

Mochiwa sees Pathways as an extension of the Farmer Field School (FFS) approach, which allows farmers to see for themselves the differences between traditional and new production techniques or seed varieties. Through the farmer field school demonstration plots, adoption of new technologies happens more quickly. The critical addition of the “business” element to the Pathways Farmer Field and Business School (FFBS) approach takes the farmers first through the process of searching for a market before production.  “If you can assure farmers of a market, then you can be sure they will produce.  And with tools like the cost-benefit analysis sheet, they can improve their negotiation skills. They know the value of what they produce.”

They are particularly important for Pathways’ group members. Even when they are in mixed training groups, women put themselves behind the men. He notes, “They’re very good at doing the work and implementing, but if you ask them a question—they will wait for the men to respond. The women have to be encouraged to speak up and really feel part of the group work. In the homes, they are doing all the work, but they are not appreciated, and they are not organized. They are working as much as men, harder than men—but they need to know it’s not just for them to carry all this normal loads. Sometimes the men don’t allow their wives to join the groups. The men also need to be trained.”  The promising news, he says, is that there really is demand for this type of discussion.

“Yesterday, I went back to the village (where we tested various exercises with the community), and they asked me, ‘How did you know this would be so beneficial to us! How did you know we really needed this? When are you going to do more? We want the whole community to hear this.’ Those who attended were saying that it was really important, and that already the men wanted to change. So I told them that the paraprofessionals were going to train them on more and more, and that we were going to continue to work with them on these issues.”

The paraprofessionals left the training with documents in hand, energized to start implementing these exercises immediately. Mochiwa is confident that they will take this forward.

But the most important thing, Mochiwa emphasizes, is to provide continuous supervision and support: “If we don’t do that, the feedback and supervision, it’s like playing guitar to a goat—there will be no reaction.  After every training, we need to be in the field, and following up the work-plan that we do together. And the paraprofessionals need these interactions, so that they can share their experiences and learn from each other.”

Read More